


Teenage Dad

by BakaDoll



Series: Aftg Tumblr Prompts [1]
Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Adoption, Angst, Dysfunctional Family, Fluff, Past Abuse, Teenage Parents, mention of drug use, toddler twinyards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-27
Updated: 2018-02-27
Packaged: 2019-03-24 20:57:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13819314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BakaDoll/pseuds/BakaDoll
Summary: Prompt: Can you do an AU Nicky is the parental guardian to children! (Whatever age)Andrew and Aaron with fluff and angst?





	Teenage Dad

It wasn't always easy. Actually, it was almost never easy. 

Nicky got used to the looks they attracted soon; the judging stares by strangers, the whispers at the store when Nicky - barely 18 years old himself - went through the baby section, picking up a new pack of diapers, two identical looking toddlers waddling after him and a tired expression on his face. Sleep was a luxury with a pair of two two year old twins, and the bags under Nicky’s eyes were evidence for that.

 

“Kiki!” Aaron cried. He couldn’t pronounce Nicky yet - let alone Nicholas - and so him and Andrew just called him Kiki. 

 

“What is it, Aaron?” Nicky squatted down in front of the wailing toddler. He wiped the tiredness off his face and put on a smile instead, drying the tears off Aaron’s pudgy cheeks with his thumb.

Aaron pointed his finger in a direction, waving it around wildly, trying to communicate what caused him such distress without actually being able to form a lot of words. He was just starting to talk.

“A’druuh,” Aaron said, “A’druuh!”

Immediately, Nicky’s stomach sank. Andrew. Aaron was trying to say his brother’s name, and that was when Nicky realised he was nowhere to be seen. He had just turned his back to the twins for five seconds to reach for the diapers on the topshelf, and now he was gone.

“Oh no. No, no, no, where is he? Andrew?” Nicky scooped the remaining twin up into his arm and looked around frantically, but Andrew wasn’t in the aisle with them. Nicky was sure both twins were still with him when they entered it - but two year olds could be incredibly fast if they wanted to. And Andrew usually only wanted to, when he could slip from Nicky’s view somehow. 

Okay. He needed to calm down. If he panicked now, he’d just make Aaron cry even more. Andrew couldn’t be  _ that _ far away, could he? He was, after all, still a toddler with very short legs. Very, very short legs - the twins were small, even for their age.

 

Andrew wasn’t in the aisles near them either, but there was one more spot Nicky had to check. They usually went to the same store for all their shops, so, even though the twins had only been with Nicky for three months, they knew their way around - especially Andrew. Andrew was a clever child - he started to walk when he was only one year old, whereas his brother needed another six months before he started his first tries. Andrew was better at talking, too, but his social skills on the other hand where far behind those of his brother. While Aaron already learned to share when asked to, Andrew would start screaming and crying and refuse to give up anything he considered his. Where Aaron showed first signs of empathy, Andrew still focused on himself and his own needs.

The pediatrician assured Nicky it was completely normal for children, even identical twins, to develop in different stages and paces, but sometimes he couldn’t help but worry about Andrew a bit.

 

Just like now, when Nicky was power-walking through a Target at 3 in the afternoon, navigating through the masses of costumers with a toddler on his arm, their shopping cart abandoned in the baby aisle. He could hear Andrew before he could see him.

 

“No!” Andrew shouted and Nicky’s heart skipped a beat, his legs carrying him faster as if in reflex. “No! Let go!” 

Nicky all but skidded into the candy aisle. Aaron shrieked, holding onto Nicky and immediately bursting into tears again while Andrew struggled against an older lady and a young employee, kicking and hitting and screaming as if they were burning him, when in reality they just tried to hold on to him so he won’t run off.

“Andrew!” Andrew ignored Nicky’s voice, but it caught the attention of the people in the aisle, including the two people trying to get a hold of Andrew.

 

“Is this your child?” The employee asked, relief evident on his face. He looked like he was Nicky’s age.

 

“Yes,” Nicky said, not in the mood to explain their complicated family circumstances.

 

The woman threw him one look, spotted the second, crying, twin on his arm and tutted, a scornful expression on her face. Nicky ignored it. It wasn’t worth it, and he was used to it.

“Andrew, stop making a scene and come here,” Nicky demanded.

 

“You should keep a better eye on your child,” the woman chided.

 

“Yes, Ma’am. I’m sorry.” Nicky wasn’t about to argue with her. He knew it wouldn’t lead to anything but frustration. Instead, he went over to grab Andrew’s hand. Two seconds later, there was a sharp pain in his thumb and Nicky breathed in harshly.

“Ow! Shit, Andrew, stop biting me!”

 

“Jeez, no surprise your children are so missbehaved, you should watch your language!” 

 

Nicky bit his tongue and held back tears. Not of pain, but of shame and anger. He hated how people always condemned him and the twins, telling him he was too young to have children of his own, saying the twins didn’t have a future and he should just give them up for adoption. If only they knew.

 

“Yes, Ma’am,” Nicky murmured. He ducked his head and tugged at Andrew’s hand until the toddler stopped biting and, begrudgingly, stopped struggling against Nicky’s hold as well. A speck of red was on his bottom lip when he started to pout instead.

When they turned to leave the aisle, Nicky heard her say to another woman:

 

“That’s why teenagers should go to church and learn the importance of abstinence. Things like this wouldn’t happen, if they just waited till marriage!”

 

At home, Nicky put a band-aid on his bleeding thumb and prepared dinner for the twins without another word about the incident. As his stew was cooking away and Nicky had five minutes to just breathe, he watched the twins play peacefully and couldn’t help but smile. Just a second later he felt tears burn behind his eyes, but he swallowed them and busied himself with the washing up instead.

Only when he was sitting in front of the TV that night, a glass of wine in his hand and both boys fast asleep in their cribs in the bedroom, did he allow himself to cry. Nicky cried and cried and cried and drowned his sadness in wine, but it stopped helping weeks ago.

 

Life, at 18 with two toddlers, was lonely. Nicky had next to no friends left, and those who didn’t abandon him three months ago couldn’t understand him. Neither his intentions, nor the problems he had to deal with. Even those people that stuck with him questioned his decisions and told him he’d be better off without the twins. His twins. 

Biologically, they weren’t his. They were his cousins. His father’s sister’s sons. But she was bad; she was an addict, she was abusive, and she had a new boyfriend every couple weeks. Nicky hated her. So when his father told him the news about Tilda being pregnant, Nicky had felt sick to his stomach. He was only 16 back then, but he knew those kids wouldn’t be well cared for - and he was right. Five months ago, CPS started to get involved and investigated her thanks to an anonymous call.

 

It had been Nicky, who called them.

 

He went to visit his cousins one day - he loved them to bits even though they were problematic, but he knew it wasn't their fault, they were only children - and Tilda opened the door for him piss-drunk at noon. The flat smelled like a weed plantage when she let him in, making Nicky’s eyes tear up just from the stench, and he spotted the twins in the living room, playing with an empty bottle of coke because they had barely any toys. Those they had, were gifts from Nicky and his parents. Nicky saved up a big part of the little money he got from his parents to buy toys and clothes and diapers for the twins, because he knew Tilda wouldn’t. But when he saw them, his heart stopped. Aaron had two black eyes. Andrew’s bottom lip was split, bruises all over his bare right arm. 

“What have you done to them?” Nicky cried in distress, cradling the boys in his arms, “Oh my God, Tilda, what have you done?”

Tilda had just scoffed in response and waved him off.

“They wouldn’t stop screamin’,” she said nonchalantly. 

 

After that day, as soon as he came home, he went to his room and called social services, begging them to do something about the boys. It took them one and a half months to get the boys out of there, but at least it was for good. They decided they’d never go back to Tilda - and, as horrifying as it was, it wasn’t a surprise - Tilda didn’t even try to convince them otherwise. She seemed almost happy to be rid of the twins. But finding a new home for them was hard. First of all, as social services told him, it was hard to find a home for siblings anyway, because people usually didn’t want two children at once. So a lot of times, they had to seperate siblings and give them to different families, sometimes causing them to never know about their brothers or sisters. Second of all, the twins, and especially Andrew, were problematic. Which wasn’t a surprise to anyone, considering their upbringing until then, but it made things a lot harder.

Nicky couldn’t bear the thought of his cousins being seperated. He couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing them again either, or of the possibility that they might get into families who still didn’t treat them right - so he begged his parents to take them in. Not that he was particularly happy at home. He had to act like someone he wasn’t, just so they wouldn’t send him to another one of those conversion camp. His father had a heavy hand, too, occasionally, but at least he never gave Nicky a black eye or a split lip. And his mother was a loving person, if his father gave her the opportunity to be so.

But they said no. No begging or crying or reasoning helped, they refused. His father said, it wouldn’t help the children because they’d still be too close to Tilda with them. They needed to be further away.

And maybe he was right. Maybe he was wrong. Nicky didn’t know. He was just seventeen. Maybe it was selfish, but Nicky couldn’t let them go - so he told social services he wanted to adopt them. He’d turn eighteen soon, making him eligible to adopt children. Of course the social workers weren’t convinced at all, but God seemed to be on Nicky’s side, because one of the workers on the case was a lovely young lady. She seemed to think, with the right help, Nicky could be able to raise the twins. He helped him get his own place, helped him fill out forms and get financial help. 

Two days after his eighteenth birthday, Nicky signed the adoption papers - and suddenly he was a father of two.

 

Since then it had been three months. It wasn’t easy. It was exhausting. And Nicky already questioned his decision more than once - but never did he regret it. He cried almost every night, but every hug from Aaron, every smile from Andrew, every night the twins fell asleep in his arms to the songs his mother used to sing him, every happy “Kiki” and every pretend-tea the twins brewed for him made up for every single tear Nicky ever shed.

 

***

 

“I don’t want to go here,” Aaron said for the umpteenth time and Nicky just sighed.

  
“Aaron, look,” he said, kneeling in front of the pouting toddler, “I promise you will have loads of fun here, okay? Look, there’s so many other children to play with.”

 

“I have Andrew, I don’t need other children to play with,” Aaron said.

 

“Other children are stupid,” Andrew chimed in. 

 

“Hey, that’s rude, Andrew,” Nicky chided. He ended the discussion by grabbing the boys by their hands again and pulling them with him, into the kindergarten they were supposed to start today.

 

Nicky couldn’t believe they were three already, and he dreaded giving them up into someone else’s care, even if it was just for five half days for now. He felt sick, not knowing how they were at all times, but he had no other choice - his social worker, the lovely lady who helped him get custody of the boys in the first place, managed to help Nicky find a job that paid enough to support him and the twins, and he’d start it in two months. So now he needed to settle them into kindergarten.

 

He helped the boys put on their slippers and put their coats onto their little hooks - God, it was all so small and adorable - while the manager of the kindergarten was standing right behind him, chatting away about the setting, their policies, their offers and all those other things Nicky already knew from the prospectus he studied for weeks. 

“Okay, come on,” Nicky said, giving each twin a kiss to the forehead before getting up again and holding out his hands for them. They clung to it, getting nervous now, too, in the new setting and with the prospect of having to stay here without Nicky.

 

“Don’t worry, boys, I’ll be with you today, I won’t go anywhere,” he assured them and led them into the room.

 

“Oh, hello, you must be our new arrivals! Aaron and Andrew, right? Wow, you’ll have to tell me who’s who so I can tell you apart, okay? And no fibbing!” Nicky thought he might have ascended to heaven. The man coming towards him and the twins had a bright, friendly smile on his gorgeous face, he was a couple inches taller and at least five years older than Nicky, and fit as fuck. Holy shit. Nicky prayed to God this wasn’t the twin’s keyperson or he was completely  _ fucked _ .

 

“Hello, I’m Erik, Andrew’s and Aaron’s keyperson,” the man beamed, holding out his hand for Nicky. Shit.

 

“H-...Hi,” Nicky stammered, just staring.

 

“Kiki, I think you have to shake his hand,” a small voice came from Nicky’s right side. Embarrassed that Andrew had to remind him of that, Nicky quickly took Erik’s hand, laughing nervously.

“Oh, eh, hi, nice to meet you. I’m Nicky.”

 

Erik just smiled kindly and didn’t acknowledge Nicky’s blunder.

  
“Okay, great, then let me show you around, okay? And maybe Andrew, Aaron and me can go play a bit, while your Dad talks about all the boring stuff with Miss Harris, okay?”

 

“Sounds good, doesn’t it, boys?” Nicky said as him and the twins followed Erik further into the room.

The twins looked at each other, scanned the room and seemed to think about it.

 

“Yes,” Aaron eventually said, albeit reluctantly.

 

“I think you’ll have a lot of fun with Erik,” Nicky assured the boys - not yet suspecting how much fun  _ he  _ would have with their teacher in the future, too.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to visit me on [my tumblr](http://fox-sleeping-minyard.tumblr.com/) and chat with me! ♥


End file.
